To Set Stars Aflame
by Cloud Auditore Fair
Summary: Being psychic doesn't free you from being pulled by the threads of fate. Alice learns this bits and pieces at a time, and then all at once.
1. Where Silence Has Lived

**A/N:**

For Paige.

* * *

A car almost T-boned them as they sped along the small, lonely highway.

And it was enough for Rosalie. Her mood told her to grab the steering wheel screaming in Alice's grip and yank it to the side, but she convinced herself to slam her hand onto Alice's thigh instead. "Is somebody _dying_?"

No response.

Alice slowed enough for them to not flip during a curve in their route.

The blurring trees became a focus for Rosalie as her jaw clenched and she kept from squeezing or shaking her sister or otherwise being unproductive. "You cut off the first shopping trip _I_ wanted in years over a five second vision and I didn't ask. I didn't complain. I just went along. I trust you. But I've never seen you be this way. Not in the decades we've known each other, Alice! You have to tell me something."

Life breathed into Alice just enough for her to whisper, "I don't know what to tell you."

A growl rumbled in Rosalie's chest, but it wasn't necessarily directed at Alice. It was about possibility. Possibility, as she settled back into the seat and the world zipped by, was something she held dear, except when it was something she couldn't account for. Except when it could lead to pain and regret. Amber eyes glanced over again and yes, judging from Alice's unnatural anxiety, this could lead to pain and regret.

So Rosalie didn't bother her anymore. She just mentally prepared herself to take care of her family and decided to discard possibility because as much as she adored it, possibility could drown you.

* * *

Even still, even with about an hour to do it, Rosalie Hale was not prepared.

The car hadn't stopped moving before Alice shot out of it without a concern for Rosalie's yell. By the time she hoped the seat and hit the brake and put the car in park halfway up their driveway, she'd entirely lost sight of her charge and cursed.

Another curse slipped from her lips as the door handle came with her.

The distinct rush of Esme came out the house with Edward trailing. "What is it?"

But Rosalie was gone, after her sister and whatever was making the most upbeat person she knew wildly distressed. It was so bad she didn't even have to follow Alice's scent.

Alice was tearing a literal path through the forest. Broken branches, fleeing animals, underbrush all but cleared, and shreds of clothes.

It made Rosalie run faster.

Farther and farther away from civilization. They were in a place for hunters and prey, and still, they went up a mountain. Up, up, up. The air got thinner. Forks became a thing of memories.

She was a vampire and she was alone in it. Not even the distant blur of Alice or the insistent sound of Edward and Esme crashing through nature behind her felt like company. And maybe they weren't.

Maybe Alice felt alone in her mission, too.

The yell of her mate and then her brother reached her ears. Close.

In a few seconds, Rosalie had to resist coming to a complete stop at the glimpse of Alice literally tackling Emmett off his feet. She broke through the trees and halted in a clearing—a campsite—and didn't know where to look.

Jasper was a statue, dropped in a crouch ready to fight, with his head turned toward Alice. Her hand was out to him and Rosalie had to stare, but _yes_ , it was shaking in the air in her silent plea for him not to act on whatever he was feeling. Emmett was at Alice's feet still since he'd never found the will or reason to jump back to his feet. A streak of dirt decorated his cheek as his face stretched into what would've been comical shock if it was any other situation.

A stranger stood at the edge of the campsite, weight on their back foot as red eyes moved between them all.

Rosalie was only just taking in the body and its lifeless eyes lying just outside a large, green tent when Esme and Edward stopped next to her. That is, Esme stopped.

Edward had only hesitated, and only for a second.

A snarl ripped out his throat at the injustice before him, at the unexpected murder on their doorstep, at the reminder he was a monster.

Only decades of familiarity made Rosalie move once Alice twitched. The back of Edward's jacket ripped apart in her attempt to grab him, then she swiped at empty air, and then her fingers clamped down on a stiff shoulder. She dug her heels into the ground and was just considering flipping him backwards when Esme caught his arm.

But he just waved his free one at Alice and venom shot out his mouth with a hiss. "How could you?"

"I don't care who gives it, but I'm getting a five second explanation. Now."

The stranger just looked between them. At Jasper, still and focused on her. At Edward and his clear desire to attack her as if that made up for something even though he stayed put. At Emmett leaning up on his elbows in the dirt. At Alice, the only one with her back turned to a possibly hostile vampire. After lingering on Rosalie, she settled on Esme. She cleared her throat, but didn't otherwise move.

"What is there to explain? This person's corpse speaks for itself! She must leave. Now."

She didn't even spare Edward a glance.

When Alice's lips parted, a choked noise came out, but nothing else. A hand fisted in her already wild hair and her eyes just bounced between Rosalie and Esme with need for understanding of...something. Of this anomaly in her behavior.

Edward's head jerked to the side to practically glare at Esme. "Are we really doing nothing? Nothing about a nomad endangering our lifestyle? We sit and ask for explanations when there are none to be had?"

A few blond curls fell out of place as Jasper shifted, just a little, the smallest tension leaving him. "Emmett and I came upon a hunt. She...incensed him and Alice stopped him from attacking her. Rather, trying to." He finally stood up straight, head cocked as he stared across the campsite. "You didn't move."

Red eyes drifted from him to Alice.

However, Alice never turned around and Esme made a noise somewhere between annoyed and tired. "Emmett, get up. Edward, stop embarrassing yourself."

It took the shuffling of Emmett for Alice to come back to herself and she offered him a hand while Edward was released.

And Edward took the opportunity to stomp half the way to Alice. His finger jabbed through the air. "Why are you protecting her? You _know_ she's a shield and as dangerous as she is, double that with the fact she's killed on our land. The wolves are going to lose their minds—"

"No need to do that for them." Rosalie just shrugged when Edward whipped around to glare at her for a second.

"—and you're keeping your reasoning a secret from me. Me! For this random nomad?"

But Alice turned away from him and stared at the stranger just as she had been staring the whole time. Her hand twitched at her side. She swallowed, lips starting and stopping before they pursed. Then, quiet and defeated, she more so said than asked, "You won't stay."

The stranger took off.

* * *

Wood crumbled in her hand. Splintered and fragmented and rotten as it fell through her fingers.

It felt like a small stone was tossed into the lake of her being.

The ripples once meant something.

They still whispered it.

But she'd forgotten the language and just pushed open the rest of the door hanging on by a single hinge. Something made her eyes sweep across the ruins of the small house this time. A rug all but eaten away or worn through. The same chair she'd thrown against the wall years and years and lifetimes ago and the ripped painting it had caused. Glass crunched beneath her boots as the door swung shut, the hinge coming out of place just a little more. Whether it was memories or pure thought, she found herself stooping to pick up one of the fractured legs and dragged her thumb over what used to be the smooth and beautiful wood of a chair that could've paid for a month of food when she...when she was…

Before.

She settled it atop the lone table too gently, too slowly, and it occurred to her it was much darker inside than it had been when she first opened the door. She kept doing that lately. Losing time.

The fact she hadn't flung it out the window missing all but one pane of glass brought up the question of how tired her soul was.

It was a question she had been ignoring for a while.

 _For too long, perhaps_.

Perhaps, as she knelt in the corner of the living room of the dead and curled her fingers around the edge of a dresser and pulled. She reached into the dark behind it, needing only a moment to find what she came here for. While it didn't need to be hidden, you didn't get to survive for as long as she had without at least a little paranoia.

The door finally gave up behind her and fell onto the porch and its missing boards.

She didn't look back, but as she took an abrupt left and walked so that the forest enveloped her, she did wonder how long it would take for people to stop whispering about the ghost haunting the abandoned cabin on the east side of the mountain and the forgotten souls who had ventured too close.

When she did come to a stop, the stars were bright in the sky and she contemplated them.

They were different.

Still, she dropped to her knees and flared out her coat and began to dig into the dirt. Time had buried her chest deeper than she had, and, somewhere along the way, she'd lost the key. Not that it mattered. The old metal of the lock broke apart with a pinch of her fingers.

The creak of it opening brought the beginning of silence as she dragged her palm across the old thing and memories threatened her. Questions threatened her.

She shook herself and retrieved some of the items to tuck them into her coat before burying the chest for perhaps the final time, unlocked.

* * *

Edward had only just started talking to her regularly again, and now all he did was shoot her sideways glares when he couldn't avoid being in the same room as her. He'd even had his classes switched around for the year so they didn't have to share one.

Knuckles rapped on the frame of her open door. "Would you like to go shopping?"

"No." Alice didn't move even though she looked very much unlike herself. She was at her desk, leaning on its surface with an arm folded around her head and fingers gripping her hair. Her free hand was splayed across a set of pens she rolled back and forth across the rich wood. "Thank you, Rosalie."

It was honest and a gift of permission to escape Alice and her mood. Instead, Rosalie came into the room and reached past her sister to pick up the sketchbook. She flipped through dozens upon dozens of pages. They were more or less the same, at first. Blurry shapes done in charcoal and nameless buildings. Someone as if they stood at the edge of your vision. But then different pens came into play and the charcoal began to subside and harsh lines replaced fog and uncertainty. Regret gave the erratic image of a destroyed home, the family inside pulled from life one at a time. Red eyes and a hunter's grin—closer and closer and closer. Filling the page. Blurs and charcoal and red eyes and a hunter's grin.

All black ink for the night, for the endless and ever-watching forest, for the moon, for the figure standing in a tree like a silent sentinel.

The hunter didn't appear again.

Rosalie reached the last page and she paused. It was the only one in full color and rich with clarity as if it had been torn straight from a memory. She set down the sketchbook, watching as not a second later Alice's fingers traced over the jawline of the stranger from the campsite last spring.

"I can't watch you pretend anymore and I don't think you're capable of it for one more day."

Alice didn't say anything.

A sigh left Rosalie as she reached into chaotic hair to ease her grip and rest her fingers over Alice's. At last, she asked what everyone in the house already had. "Who is she?"

"I don't know," she whispered. Her fingertips slid to the edge of the page. "But she saved my life. No, I don't know her from my human life. Her appearance didn't make me remember any of it. That vision I had that pissed you off over not telling you?"

"I was not pissed."

Alice continued like she had merely agreed. "I didn't know _how_ to tell you about it. It was just," her fingers crumpled the edges of the page, "Just a blur. A blank. Nothing. Empty. It hit me that I'd experienced it before, back in the haze of my time as a newborn. I'd forgotten all about it after enough killing. Between the thirst and the visions, I was...God, Rose, I was something else."

"Rabid? Blinded?"

"Both. I still can't recall everything, but I remember him." She flipped back some pages and jammed her finger against red eyes. "I was a game to him and I was too young and too stupid to care beyond nothing getting in the way of my next meal. I think I got into half of a fight with him once and he kept farther back after that. But anyway, I remember feeding, and I remember my fight or flight instincts kicking up the worst they ever had because I kept having distorted visions or ones that just ended all of a sudden. I felt too vulnerable. I was ready to fight and I found him watching. Waiting."

A pen practically appeared in her hand and she started filling red irises with black.

"He wasn't alone. I remember that. I remember being angry. My visions were telling me I would die. Something happened. A flash of noise and then fighting. I ran. I moved on."

The pages turned.

"I'd just killed—a couple in their own home? A lonely old man? A single mother and her child? I don't know. I was leaving and I saw her watching me from a tree. I hissed, clumsily searching the future just to come up empty. She left."

Rosalie's head tilted, her hair falling over her shoulder. "And she just...wanders back into your path? After all this time?"

"I don't know."

"That can't be coincidence."

"I'm not sure anything has ever been coincidence with me."

"Are we sure she's just a shield? It's uncanny for her to find you twice."

Alice sat up to toss the sketchbook into a trashcan. "I appreciate your mind, Rose, but I just don't _know_."

"Do you want to?"

She looked up at gold eyes. "Ask what you want to ask."

Rosalie's fingers moved to tap the back of the chair. "Do you want her to come back?"

"Yes."

"Well, I guess we're just going to have to wait because she has to be the most solitary nomad to ever live to stay under the radar. If the Volturi even heard a rumor of a shield, they would snatch them up like a greedy toddler."

Alice frowned once her sister started walking away. "Where are you going?"

Pausing in the doorway, Rosalie had a hand on the frame and a certain smile on her face. "To harass Edward into getting over himself, of course. He's had plenty of time. Besides, I don't like how he's been toward you."

For some reason, Alice cupped a hand around her mouth as she called after Rosalie, "He's entitled to feel certain ways, Rose!"

"I'm entitled to not really caring."

Maybe Alice didn't remember her human life, but she didn't wonder anymore whether or not she had family or friends who had loved her because she currently had a sister who would challenge the sun to a fistfight in her name.


	2. Echo

**A/N:** 2:30am update, ftw.

* * *

Textbooks crushed a water bottle she hadn't opened as she dropped her backpack in a corner of her room. Two seconds later and she had faceplanted onto her bed, lost in some large pillows she'd borrowed from Rosalie.

There was a short series of knocks before the bed dipped.

The clock on the opposite wall ticked.

Alice's words were muffled by a purple pillow. "Yes, Esme?"

"I know that you see the future."

Ticking. Endless ticking and the weird sensation in her gut at the rare instance of Esme sounding hesitant. "But?"

Esme laid her hand on Alice's back. "I know that you see the future, but I want you to know that I have a good feeling."

"About?"

"Don't act like your brother."

Alice hummed into the pillow.

"Sometimes the best things come when you least expect them, sweetheart." She squeezed a small shoulder. "I would know."

Then she was gone, leaving Alice in her wake. Leaving Alice frozen because she'd casually dropped a hint—an approval—of something Alice had hardly allowed herself to even consider. It was a thought best kept to the darkest of nights where she could almost forget she even had family. It was a question locked inside a heart that couldn't betray its existence as it sat unmoving.

Still, regardless of the answer, she needed it like she needed blood.

* * *

Time and ash and blood had brought her here.

With no roads left, she could fully embrace this curiosity that had lurked in her soul for...always.

This area of the forest held the small vampire's scent to a degree one could think she lived here. And so Bella had picked this place. Although, initially, she had planned to simply leave the item on a branch and move on.

But she didn't have anywhere to move onto anymore. She didn't have anyone she felt like visiting. Her heart was too tired.

For three days and three nights, she remained there. Crouched in a tree, unmoving even for a passing cloud and its rain, she waited and waited. She'd picked a branch not too far from the ground, but certainly above eye level. The remains of a breeze that had rustled too many leaves touched her hair gently and she sucked in a deep breath, opening her eyes for the first time in a while.

The small vampire arrived long after the sun had risen, erratic and destructive as she flipped to kick a branch from its home. Her hand was fisted in her hair before she landed on her feet and even as she spun in an almost frantic type of search, she was graceful.

Interesting, considering the first time Bella had seen her.

Then she froze, shoulders jerking up. She took in a large breath. Another.

Meanwhile, Bella found her breath still in her chest and something forming in her throat that she couldn't remember feeling before, if she ever did. She couldn't even remember its name.

The soft ground beneath her grew terribly disturbed as she turned without lifting her feet. Gold eyes locked onto Bella.

And they were so different than before. There was history in that gaze. Depth. Ache and curiosity and life and loss.

Bella remained crouched on her branch and she remained standing there.

Seconds dragged into minutes. A small eternity as a harsher wind came to them and swayed branches and pulled leaves from their homes and brought on the squawking of some birds. Motionless, they continued as statues, not bothering to remove the leaves caught on them or, in Bella's case, her hair from her face. The noises of the forest faded to silence, a silence with meaning for the first time in a long time for Bella.

And maybe she still couldn't explain her reasoning for doing this, for being here, but now she knew it was the right choice. As if there had been any other choice when it came down to the soul.

The small statue moved, breathed, but her hand was still stressed in her hair. "You came back." Another slow inhale. "You stayed."

In a way, Bella had been waiting much longer than three days. The thought dragged her gaze to a branch that dipped toward the ground as she refused to consider a reason.

It brought the smaller vampire's along and she took off like a shot to retrieve the item left there. She flipped the ring along her fingers, studying it with a deep line between her eyebrows. Really, it was a plain thing. Silver made up the band and there was a flowing groove around half of it, by accident or design.

"This is...mine. I actually remember it." She slid it onto her right index finger, eyes glued to it as she turned her hand every which way to examine it. "It's hazy, but it's there. I had it when I woke up and lost it sometime before I first saw you, with that other vampire."

Bella hummed.

"You've had it all this time." She looked at Bella then, the question in her eyes clear as day.

And then Bella finally moved. A twitch. A realization as her hand stalled in the air in front of her. Half of a growl built in her chest and she watched herself form a fist.

There wasn't a word for this.

This, when it had stopped being a feeling decades and lifetimes ago.

The branch dipped, making Bella jolt backwards against the tree. She was met by golden eyes lacking fear, but instead holding something like interest and concern as their owner remained still.

She couldn't remember the last time someone looked at her without suspicion or fear.

"What is it?"

Eyes instead on the neighboring tree, Bella cleared her throat and tapped a finger to it.

"What do-Oh! _Oh_! Oh well that's new. Carlisle's going to have a field day. Really?" She only paused long enough for Bella to begin to nod. A grin lit up her face and her hands flew in front of her.

Bella stared.

The grin turned to a frown that pulled at her eyebrows. "Do you not know ASL?"

Averting her gaze with a cough, Bella waved her hand in a so-so motion.

"I…" Her lips twitched and even her _eyes_ smiled and Bella hadn't known people could actually do that. "That seems incredibly negligent of you."

Bella's huff was postponed by the sad shift in the other vampire and how it even weighed down her shoulders.

"And lonely. Are you out of practice or...?"

She shook her head.

And then Bella suffered emotional whiplash at the broad grin offered to her, complete with a bounce that shook their branch.

"Allow me to sound vain and ask if you only recently started learning so we could talk?" Seeing Bella's gaze travel, she bounced again and clapped her hands together. "Excellent!"

A seed of anxiety sprouted and crawled up Bella's throat under that happy stare and her eyes kept darting around so she eventually signed her name in a bit of a blur.

She was ready to throw herself out of a tree over a smile and she'd killed how many people?

"Bella. Beautiful. I'm Alice, which I perhaps should've started with but that's the past and we're in the future of that here in the present so that's a bit late."

She nodded her agreement.

"Given your at least partial interest in talking to me, would it be safe to guess this is more than you dropping the ring off to me?"

Slowly, Bella raised one of her shoulders and dropped it.

Alice hummed loudly until she dragged the sound to a high pitch and popped her lips. "This is hard, not seeing outcomes. Hard, but fun. Very well. Into the dark we go. Rather, fog." She pointed a finger at Bella's frown, her own expression deathly serious. "Your shield muddles my psychic abilities."

So that made her Alice Cullen, then, for certain. Bella had wondered because of the eye color, but assumptions were a leading cause of death.

"I suppose we should talk. About boring, serious things. Probably with Esme, at least."

* * *

Bella felt trapped.

There was no other way to put it, no possible romanticization, and no remedy.

Standing alone in an empty living room, she felt the need to run literally anywhere else.

Nothing was broken down in...this house. She still refused to think of it as hers, or maybe she just couldn't. Some things needed some repairs or replacements, but it was altogether nice. Complete and unmarred by time and troubles.

She felt like an intruder.

It was bare and she couldn't begin to consider buying furniture or anything besides the curtains already on the windows. What even went into a house anymore? What could she need or want? All she could think of was a solitary chair and perhaps a table, but that struck her as no longer practical. Such a minimal setup didn't seem like it would allow Alice to, well, _anything_. Bella had spent a couple hours in the Cullen house, going over things with Alice and Esme, and there was nothing but luxury there. Luxury that you were welcome to, though, as she had seen the opposite and lived it as well.

She pulled herself from the thought of stone walls and ornate tapestries.

Esme.

Another issue with Bella's chair-and-table preferences.

The other vampire was certainly motherly, certainly caring, and it was honest. So much of the Cullens seemed honest so far. So, so, so honest. Esme, the most honest. She'd been embarrassed that she didn't know ASL and vowed to learn it as soon as she could and _apologized_ when Bella herself wasn't even fluent.

It didn't make sense. And, on some level, Bella knew it was a sad thing that it didn't make sense to her. That kindness without a catch existed and could be extended to her.

How tired was her soul?

She slipped the backpack off her shoulder that she'd meant to set down when she first entered and just let it thud against the white tile. White. She didn't like it. A black scuff followed her foot as she dragged her boot along the floor. So easily altered.

She moved to leave, but had to double back after getting out the door to fish keys from her backpack.

* * *

Alice pulled into the driveway beside Bella's new truck. Well, the truck new to her. She hadn't wanted anything made in the last five years and the dark blue, paint-speckled monster looked like it had put in its share of work over the years of its life.

A breeze pulled at her scarf as she went up the creaky stairs to the weathered porch of this house so fortunately removed from the others on this street. Her hand stalled in the air, but she scolded herself and rapped her knuckles on the door. It felt so formal, in a way, knocking on the door of a vampire's home.

There was some advanced joke there somewhere.

The door cracked open, but that was all.

Alice pushed on it and leaned to the side to see Bella kneeling in the far corner of the living room with a tape measure and a face like she held the fate of a country in her hands. She waved into the doorway. "I can't come in without a proper invitation, you know."

It was such a quiet noise Alice nearly missed it. A soft but there exhale and, visually, a twitch of those shoulders. Bella retracted her tape and straightened.

You'd think between Jasper and Edward and _Rosalie_ that Alice could read faces well, but she was being put to the test under this red-eyed stare. "You didn't answer your phone so I came by." Which sounded terribly rude now that she said it aloud.

Crowding a vampire who'd only been in town for three days was as bad an idea as it sounded.

Still, Bella just waved her in.

And Alice practically skipped in. A voice in her head suspiciously like Esme's chastised her as she shut the door. "Maybe you should work on locking it behind you."

She turned to see a jerk of shoulders as Bella scribbled in a notebook she'd balanced on her knee. However, Alice found herself more interested in the extra tiles laid out in the center of the room and stopped next to them. One had a few colors on its uneven surface. The next, a smooth, black stone. After that was a grey one with swirls in it and the last was a dark blue with black variations in it.

"You like blue?"

She looked up just as Bella did. There was a faint pinch of her eyebrows as she became totally still except for her eyes roaming around the room. Then red jumped to gold and she offered a single, serious nod.

"What about green?"

It wasn't that Alice really wanted to know about the color, not at first, but rather about Bella. And so Alice watched that same internal debate go on in Bella's head as she thought about it. She didn't even get up from her crouch.

Her hands twitched and she set down her tape, but her hands just hovered over her knee while her face finally shifted. A frown pulled at her mouth and her eyebrows drew together, but this time from annoyance, from something deeper than that.

"Light," Alice said and signed, "or dark? Shades?"

"Dark shades," was Bella's answer, but her eyes were elsewhere now.

Alice hadn't wanted her to be upset. Far from it. She was simply...curious. Every interaction with Bella had been so, so, so deathly serious up to this point that Alice wasn't sure she knew how to smile. However, Bella's seriousness held such sincere thought to it that even extended to Alice asking about colors. Hopefully she had the patience to match.

A safe hope, considering she'd held onto Alice's ring all these years.

When Bella tilted her head, Alice mimicked her until red eyes flicked down and back to her eyes. She felt her thumb stall in its mindless turning of her ring. "Oh. Just thinking."

"Good? Bad?" Bella's hands paused in the air, an extension of her honesty as she continued to stare. Waiting. Waiting but still asking.

Humming, Alice clasped her own hands in front of herself and let her eyes wander as she crossed the room to Bella's corner. It was so bare. Empty. There was nothing to say someone wanted to stay here. But Bella was planning to redo the floors, so that created enough hope for Alice. She knelt in front of Bella and opened her mouth. Shut it. Scooted back a bit.

"What's wrong?"

Alice blinked at the deep red focused on her. "Nothing," When Bella's eyes rolled, she bounced once in her indignation. "Hey! It's true."

With a shake of her head, Bella went back to her notebook. However, she made the breath freeze in Alice's lungs when she leaned toward her without looking. All she ever did was backtrack. Keep an exact distance from people. She followed instead of leading or walking beside you, never allowing anyone behind her. But now she was actually moving toward someone, toward Alice. Her hand met Alice's shoulder and pushed her back so that she was sitting instead of kneeling.

"Rude."

Red eyes flicked to Alice and back to her notes before a scoff left her. She shook her head again.

Crossing her legs under herself, Alice tilted her head to study Bella, but Bella wasn't paying attention to her. She was adding to her notes. She'd pushed her over.

"Oh!"

Alice's balance was gone. She was off. Without thought, her voice fell. "You're rather observant."

Bella nodded once, not offering anything else. The notebook was the subject of her focus. But she wasn't writing anything and her face was as plain as ever.

"I can be...too much." When Bella finally looked up at her just to flick her wrist, Alice huffed. "No. You don't understand. Rose has literally thrown me out a window. More than once."

Bella's lips twitched then, and it wasn't a smile, or even a smirk, but it was the first real thing that wasn't dead serious from her. It was so small, yet so significant. Alice found herself moving forward onto her knees again and she could feel her jaw working, but she couldn't actually say anything. How do you ask someone to smile?

No, no, no. You can't do that.

But Alice could watch the way Bella watched her come closer without moving away.

Alice bit her lip to keep from saying something ridiculous and inched closer. But only a few inches. Anything else would probably be too greedy, too much. And that proved true as Bella shifted only enough for another vampire to see. A tensing of muscles here, a twitch there.

She was ready to run at a moment's notice. So Alice stayed still, her hands clasped so tightly it almost hurt as she watched red eyes flick to different parts of her, searching for movement. For intentions.

Unblinking, Bella leaned toward her again—falling onto a knee this time—and her hand hovered in the space between them. Hovered, hovered, hovered. Hovered until Alice felt she might shatter. At last, her fingertips came down on Alice's knuckles. Brushed against the cracks beginning to form there.

If Alice was human, she would've bitten through her lip.

Bella tapped her knuckles twice.

But Alice couldn't relax. It was her turn to retreat. She found herself standing over the tiles Bella had selected and left in the center of the room. "Have you picked one?"

Her voice was so high it would've only been fair for some god to strike her down right now to save her.

Bella appeared at her side, shoulder bumping hers as her entire body twitched, a gasp shaking her lungs. She spun to be on the other side of the tiles and didn't look up. Couldn't look up. Red eyes were _burning_. Alice could feel them piercing her, picking apart her being and looking for the things she kept locked away..

The cracks spread across her knuckles.

Bella had to clear her throat twice for dark eyes to drag their way back to her. "You?"

It took two seconds too long for Alice to realize Bella hadn't meant she'd picked her. She swallowed and let her gaze fall again. "The blue one."

With a single nod, Bella darted away and back again. Her hand flew across a fresh page before she flipped the notebook around to hold it out.

 _Will you call and place the order for me so I don't have to drive back there yet?_

What followed was the store's number, Bella's information, and the items she needed with their quantities.

She looked up just to find red eyes on a wall, and her own eyes strayed to Bella's tense jaw. The notebook folded as she crushed it to her chest. "I'd be happy to."


End file.
